Great art is timeless, and speaks across time, culture, and space. Yet great works come from real people living real lives—whether their work was made 5 minutes or 500 years ago. Popular Smithsonian Associates speaker Paul Glenshaw returns to the Art + History series to look at great works of art in their historical context. He delves into the time of the artist, explores the present they inhabited, and what shaped their vision and creations.

The African American soldiers of the Massachusetts 54th in Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial stride confidently toward battle for a cause they are willing to die for—freedom. Almost half the members of the regiment, including their white commanding officer, Col. Robert Gould Shaw, would be killed in the July 1863 attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina. The original memorial stands in Boston Common, with a plaster version on display at the National Gallery. Saint-Gaudens took great pains to make sure each solider was a portrait. Who were the Massachusetts 54th and Shaw? What brought them together? How was the Civil War—and these soldiers in particular—being remembered in 1897 when the memorial was unveiled?

Glenshaw is an artist, educator, author, and filmmaker with more than 30 years’ experience working across disciplines in the arts, history, and sciences. He teaches drawing for Smithsonian Associates and studied painting at Washington University in St. Louis.

Additional Art + History Programming

• January 20: John Trumbull's Declaration of Independence
• February 17: Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze

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